Cover Story: Chris Ware’s Big Box of Melancholy

Chris Ware, the artist behind this week’s cover, “Back to School,” will be in town this weekend for the opening of an exhibition of one half of his drawings for his new book “Building Stories,” at the Adam Baumgold Gallery (with a concurrent display of the other half of the drawings in Chicago at the Carl Hammer Gallery). Though labeled a “graphic novel,” what will be released on October 2nd is a box with “fourteen distinctively discrete Books, Booklets, Magazines, Newspapers, and Pamphlets.” Eleven years in the making, “Building Stories” is a momentous event in the world of comics—the unusual format of Ware’s book is bound to help redefine yet again what a “graphic novel” can be. Ware provides his own quirky explanation on the back of the box:

With the increasing electronic incorporeality of existence, sometimes it’s reassuring—perhaps even necessary—to have something to hold on to. Thus within this colorful keepsake box the purchaser will find a fully-apportioned variety of reading material ready to address virtually any imaginable artistic or poetic taste, from the corrosive sarcasm of youth to the sickening earnestness of maturity—while discovering a protagonist wondering if she’ll ever move from the rented close quarters of lonely young adulthood to the mortgaged expanse of love and marriage. Whether you’re feeling alone by yourself or alone with someone else, this book is sure to sympathize with the crushing sense of life wasted, opportunities missed and creative dreams dashed which afflict the middle- and upper-class literary public (and which can return to them in somewhat damaged form during REM sleep).

See below for a slideshow of some of the things that inspired Ware, “from Duchamp’s “Museum in a Box” to a 1920s French set of games, to some early art school experiments from the late 1980s, including a little box of comics…And a sketch of how I envisioned the whole thing early on…” and, last but not least, a fully realized “false” New Yorker cover.

Front of the box of “Building Stories.” Photos: Nadja Spiegelman

Opened box, “Building Stories.”

The fold-out board and some of the pamphlets.

Fold-out board, pamphlets, and some of the broadsheets.

Early sketch of the project by Chris Ware.

An antique game box which provided inspiration, courtesy Chris Ware.

A Treasure Box of Famous Comics, courtesy Chris Ware.

Another source of inspiration: Marcel Duchamp’s “Museum in a Box.”

Student project: Ware’s early prototype (1989) of a comics box.

When Chris Ware sent us this “false” cover, he told us: “I’m also attaching one of the pages which operates in one of the books as a companion to the Money cover (same characters, size, viewing angle, etc.) so to get the right feel going for it, I actually drew it as a cover, even though I knew it wouldn’t be one. There’s just something about having that New Yorker logo at the top of the drawing that makes you make certain decisions that you might not otherwise. Pretty much entirely just for your amusement.”